Back at the fish store, my choices, which were probably the same as most other people on the East Coast, were haddock, salmon, flounder, dolphin (not "the" Flipper who is really a porpoise), tuna, swordfish, shrimp, clams, shark and one I had never seen before, Chilean sea bass (at a pricey $10.99). I settled on dolphin (alias Mahi Mahi), shrimp (small, not the oxymoronic "jumbo shrimp") and the Chilean sea bass. I passed up the other varieties because of price. I passed up shark because of my environmental conscience.
Some people seem to think that sharks are being overfished even to the point of being threatened with extinction. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has been pressuring the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which monitors the world's fisheries but which has no authority to do any more than that, to at least acknowledge that sharks are being overfished. One reason for the suspected overfishing is that shark fishing often takes place in international waters where no one has authority to declare sharks off limits. Another reason is that there are areas of the world where no one knows how many sharks of which species are being caught but there is great suspicion that the numbers are high.
WWF says that 125 countries are in the business of catching and eating sharks to the tune of 30 to 70 million sharks a year. That's a big spread, 30 to 70, but even if we take an average of 50 it seems like a lot of sharks since they aren't a particularly small creature. What is interesting, however, is that according to WWF, most sharks aren't caught on purpose. Ocean-going fishers are going after other fish and sharks just happen to get caught up in the gill nets used to catch tuna — literally. Elsewhere, sharks die of oxygen starvation when nets trap them and prevent them from moving, which they must do to get oxygen. Of course, macho fishers who just have to bag Jaws contribute a little to the problem too. What is despicable are fishing tournaments that award for the largest shark caught, which is then thrown out rather than consumed.
Go To Page: 1 2
